I was a shy, terrified kid. But I was also a kid who was lucky enough to have friends. I laughed with those friends. I had adventures. We dreamed together. I relied on them.

Island of the Blue Dolphins' by Scott O'Dell had a huge impact on me.

I think our job is to trust our readers. I think our job is to see and to let ourselves be seen. I think our job is to love the world.

My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.

I grew up loving music and being super involved in church choir and school musicals and such, but when I started writing is when I fell in love with the idea of doing it for the rest of my life.

Movie making is not like other art forms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be digested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money.

A lot of actors on film sets... very often they're not paying attention to the physical world around them. I think through studying art, I've always had that awareness and that's something that I've wanted to bring in to go beyond acting... As a form of expression, they are intrinsically linked.

I have a vision of artists putting into film, drama, literature, music, and paintings great themes and great characters from the Book of Mormon.